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Censorship

Submission + - Invoices for deep links from krak.dk

Submitted by
TDJ
TDJ writes: "A Danish person had a link in the footer of his homepage to krak.dk, a Danish map service. The link opened a new window on krak.dk homepage, and showed his location.
Now after two years krak.dk found out, and invoiced him DKK 4500 (about 750 USD) for previous usage of their service, and then asked him to remove the map. Krak.dk had no mentioning before in their TOS that deep linking is illegal. They do now, of course.
A court order from Denmark, February 2006, has previously ruled that deep links, when used in a fair way, is legal. (Danish text)

The whole story about Krak.dk in English"
Announcements

Submission + - Wikipedia links no longer help your Page Rank

Submitted by
Mrs. Grundy
Mrs. Grundy writes: "Wikipedia has started automatically adding rel="NOFOLOW" to all external links in an effort to combat link spam. Since wikipedia pages are hip-deep in high page rank they attract the unsavory sort of character hoping to gain a little love from Google on their coattails. By making pages NOFOLOW they essentially deny conferring any page rank points from google and hopefully reduce the incentive to spam the pages with offtopic links. This topic has come up before and the community voted to remove the NOFOLLOW business in 2005. Will this move actually reduce link spam or is even the potential clickthrough valuable enough without the boost in Google's ranking? And how does the value of ranking sites based on links change as more and more popular sites start tagging (eh...labeling) their links NOFOLLOW?"
Data Storage

Submission + - Sony says no to porn on Blu-ray Disc

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: Sony Corp. says it will not allow its disc-replicating subsidiary, Sony DADC Global, to handle adult film titles. The decision could have wide implications for Blu-ray Disc. Some analysts say it could eventually mean that Blu-ray loses out to HD-DVD in the battle to become the next-generation DVD format, in a repeat performance of the Betamax vs VHS competition. Nonetheless, a sequel to the classic Deb Does Dallas should be out on both Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD this spring.
Operating Systems

Submission + - UN Univ. Report Confirms Open Source Superior

Submitted by
Edoko
Edoko writes: "Open source software is a viable, and economic alternative to Microsoft, according to a report published by United Nations University."

The report is here: http://www.merit.unu.edu/publications/pb/unu_pb_20 06_01.pdf

Among the many recommendations is that "All Member States and other stakeholders should have the right to access public information made available in electronic format by the organizations and no one should be obliged to acquire a particular type of software in order to exercise such a right"

Also: "The Secretary- General should take the necessary measures to establish a data repository of UNESCO Free & Open Source Software Portal"

A summary is reported by the BBC here: http://http//news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/627065 7.stm"
The Internet

Submission + - Krak demands money from blogger who linked to them

Submitted by
Paul O'Flaherty
Paul O'Flaherty writes: "Krak.dk, a danish company has demanded that a blogger pay them 5625 DKK (about 940 USD) because he linked to their site. This was not hotlinking. It was a direct link to page. They have a "no deep linking" policy hidden away in the copyright section of their help pages. But no mention of it anywhere else on the site.


Per Kaarup, a good friend of mine who has been running a Danish WordPress blog about his two dogs received an letter from Krak.dk stating that they were going to charge him 5625 DKK (about 940 USD) because he linked to their site.

Per, for the last two years, has had a link in the footer of his web page, and on his contact page, to a page on Krak.dk which displayed his home. This page has a small copyright notice on the map section of the page itself stating in Danish that it is copyright and you can’t use it.

Per was not using the map, he was directly linking to the page on which it is displayed, and the page itself is much more than just the map.


How long before other sites start doing this?. Full story."
Television

Submission + - Skype creators unveils "Joost"

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Goodbye, television. Hello, Joost

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis have been talking about the idea behind Joost(TM) for a long time — even before their last venture, Skype, was born. But to make it work, they needed the right combination of factors — widespread broadband and powerful computers in particular. In early 2006, the time was right. Gathering the world's best engineers, web gurus and media visionaries, they started work under the code name of The Venice Project(TM) — and now, after much fretting and polishing, that work is ready for public viewing.

Sign up as beta tester on http://www.joost.com/
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Debian ported to PS3

Submitted by
F-3582
F-3582 writes: "According to this (German) site a Debian Live-CD has been ported to the Cell. They write:
"The Live-CD is a Debian 4.0 system which is already available for download on several other platforms. The Playstation 3 (PS3) version will include a minimalist Gnome desktop and the Firefox web browser. The officially unreleased Debian 4.0 a.k.a. Etch features Gnome 2.14 and Firefox 1.5.0.7. The Kernel will be Linux 2.6.18."
Furthermore the included Debian Installer will allow for installation of the Live system on the PS3."
Software

Submission + - Is it time for Open Office?

Submitted by lazyron
lazyron writes: I've been using Open Office a bit more lately, and got to thinking... This is much more like my current version of M$ Office than Office 2007 will be. Could it be time to try Open Office in the workplace? At least a little bit before Office 2007 is getting hammered down our throats? Are there any IT admins out there thinking about trying Open Office? Either with a few users or all of them?
Caldera

Submission + - Revealing e-mail from McBride to SCO Partners

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The true state of SCO shows through when reading between the lines of Darl McBride's yearly e-mail to SCO's Partners. Or in McBride's own words: 'the vantage point of the CEO's office provides a perspective that other are not giving.'

First, McBride points out that "SCO is committed to enhancing and innovating our product lines and seeing them evolve." As proof of this, he points out that "in recent years" they have released UnixWare 7.1.4 (in May 2004) and OpenServer 6 (in June 2005). But no examples of major releases or updates provided in 2006 or any planned for 2007.

Second, systems are provided by Dell, HP and Intel to be certified for SCO UNIX. This begs the question, can a company honestly claim to be pro-Linux and continue to seek certification from SCO at the same time?

But best of all, McBride admits that funding the court cases against IBM and Novell is dwindling. "While we expect to continue incurring legal expenses in 2007, our expectation is that those expenses will be less than they have been in prior years."

For those familiar with how bad SCO has been hemmoraging cash, it might seem odd to hear McBride claim that SCO is "committed to operating [their] UNIX business on a cash flow positive basis and [they] will make any necessary adjustments in our business in 2007 to accomplish that." How are they going to do that? It is not like McBride is willing to work for a dollar per year like Google's CEO. But to put this claim into context, the e-mail ends with "this letter is subject to the safe harbor statement regarding forward-looking statements including in our Current Report on Form 8-K filed with the SEC on January 12, 2007."

At the end of the day, the company that could theoretically indemnify it's intellectual property (did they ever actually provide a written indemnification?) can not claim it will make money in the future without a disclaimer.
Google

Submission + - Where does Google's Hardware go to die ?

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "I was talking with a co-worker today about how Google is so big, and how they make such great use of commodity hardware to do their business, and one of the topics that came up is where does Google's old hardware go ? Google has been around for many years now, and they have more machines than any sane person would own, and they are continually expanding. At some stage they must have to push out old equipment, either when it starts entering into its MTBF limits or it's been depreciated down. Searching (using Google of course) wasn't particularly fruitful. Has anyone seen where Google's hardware goes when it dies ?"
Software

Submission + - Fluendo releases WM, MPEG GStreamer codecs

Submitted by
joeljkp
joeljkp writes: "Fluendo today released the first set of general-use GStreamer plugins for patented codecs such as Windows Media, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4. Previously available only in legally-questionable form from the FFMpeg or MPlayer projects, or bundled with the TurboLinux or Linspire products, these codecs now allow anyone using a GStreamer-based media player to view media produced with such codecs. The plugins are compatible with GStreamer 0.10.x, and are available from Fluendo's webshop."
The Media

Submission + - Is America really that bad?

Submitted by Fyz
Fyz writes: Being an avid reader of Slashdot and other internet-based media while living in Europe, it is easy to get the impression that the US is not a very nice place. Everyday, a steady stream of insane lawsuits, insane convictions, insane laws, insane rules and insane pundits dominate the news I get from the media. I'm planning a longer stay in the US to do some postgraduate studies in physics, in part because my instincts tell me that it can't possibly be as bad as the impression the news gives me. Basically, I'm hoping to get a reality check. So my questions are these: Isn't the feeling "on the ground" very much different than portrayed in discussion on this site? And are the many stories of peoples rights being trampled on something you can relate to, or are they rare extremes?

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